Trinity 14

 

Romans 13.8-10, Matthew 18.15-20

 

When I was in my late teens I had a Saturday job in Littlewoods cafe, clearing tables. It was hard, dirty work, and the mess people left behind them was sometimes phenomenal. I don’t think I will ever forget the smell of plates of cold steak pie mixed with fag ash from the ciggies people had stubbed out in their leftovers – it was back in the days when you could smoke in cafes. The whole experience left me with a lasting admiration for people who clean up after others full-time, long-term, and who are so often unnoticed and unappreciated. If that’s you, whatever they pay you, it isn’t enough.

 

But the pay, of course, was the point. The one and only real joy of the job was clocking off at the end of the day – literally stamping my card in the time clock as we did back then, and collecting my wages in a small brown envelope. I’d done my bit. No one could expect any more of me – I didn’t have to scrape one more plate, wipe one more table. I could go home, put the uniform in the washing machine, have a shower and forget about it all. I’d kept my side of the contract, fulfilled my obligations, and the money in the small brown envelope – meagre though it was – confirmed that.

 

Human beings are contractually minded people. We don’t like being in debt to others, feeling obliged to them. It’s not just about work, but also about things like gift-giving and doing favours for one another. It’s embarrassing if someone gives you an expensive Christmas present when all you’ve got for them is a pair of socks. It’s much easier to ask someone to help us if we feel they “owe us one” because we’ve helped them out in the past. You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours.

 

St Paul says “Owe no one anything except to love one another”, in our first reading. It’s part of his letter to the Christian community in Rome, and it comes straight after a passage where he’s been talking about the importance of fulfilling civic obligations, paying taxes, keeping the law, respecting lawful government. The Early Christians sometimes thought that  since they were citizens of the Kingdom of God, they could ignore their responsibilities as citizens of Rome, or Athens, or wherever they happened to live. Paul disagreed. They were honour bound to pay their dues to their society, to play their part.  That’s what he means when he says they should “owe no one anything”. They have obligations which they should discharge.

 

But there was one debt, he said, that could never be paid in full, one obligation that was never discharged, which they would always be owing, and that was the obligation to love one another. Love wasn’t about contracts, he was telling them. It wasn’t a matter of mutual back-scratching. It wasn’t something people could earn or deserve, or that they could ever consider they had done enough of.

How many people is it reasonable for us to care about and treat kindly? Can we say “I’ll be loving towards the first ten people I meet today, but after that, I can do what I want” Can we claim that our contract only says we have to love people between 9 and 5, with Bank Holiday Mondays off? No. Paul is telling us that the calling to love others never ends, just as God’s love for us never ends.  

 

That’s a challenging thought, and it’s important to be clear about what it means. It doesn’t mean behaving like a doormat or ignoring things that need confronting. If we love someone we take them seriously. We care about what they do. If we see something that concerns us, of course we should speak up, even if that means conflict. It doesn’t mean staying around people who are hurting or abusing us, either. Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from people for our own safety, and if that’s the case we should do so.  But we are still called to regard them as children of God, made in his image, however deeply buried that image seems to be. We’re not given licence to write anyone off, to say they don’t matter. It can sometimes be a struggle to work out what love looks like in relationships that have gone wrong, but that’s the struggle we’re called to. We may not be part of their future, or they ours – and that may be the best thing, for them and for us, but that doesn’t mean that they are beyond the love of God.

 

In today’s Gospel reading we can see how that might work out in practice. It’s not a hard and fast guide, but it points us to the basic attitude we should have to one another.  If someone sins against you – does something wrong, says something mean – first point it out to them privately, if you can. Sometimes that’s all it takes to repair the damage. If that doesn’t work, take someone else. If that doesn’t work, you may need to go to a bigger group, to have others arbitrate. If that doesn’t work, Jesus says “let that person be to you as a Gentile or a tax-collector”. That last bit sounds a bit grim, until we remember how Jesus actually treated Gentiles and tax-collectors. While many in his society cut them off, and wouldn’t mix with them, he welcomed them to come and follow him. The door was open, if they wanted to walk through it.

 

What we do and what we say matters, the reading tells us. Our words and actions change people’s lives - for better or for worse - in ways we may never be aware of. We have more power than we think. We can bind people, tying them up in knots of resentment and anger, constantly going over old hurts. Or we can loose them from those bonds, recognising the hurt they have caused, but letting them, and ourselves, move on to new things. They might change and grow; they might not, but we have set them free to live their own lives, and that sets us free in the process. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. That’s why we need God’s help, which is just what the end of the reading promises.  

 

Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them, says Jesus. Those words are often used in the context of worship – God is there even if there aren’t many people – but it takes on a different meaning altogether when we read it in this context. Jesus isn’t just present where two or three are praying together in peace and harmony; he is also there when two or three are fighting like cats and dogs, struggling to come to some agreement. He is present to help us see through our differences to the image of God in each of us.

 

Owe no one anything, except to love. Love isn’t a contract; it’s a limitless gift, given to us by God. He is like a father, who welcomes back the prodigal son who has wasted the money he’s been given, with generosity that seemed ridiculous to those around him, and no guarantee that the son won’t go and do the same all over again. He is like a shepherd, who leaves 99 sheep in the wilderness to look for the one that is lost, or a woman who throws a party for her friends when she finds the coin she’s lost, even though the party probably cost as much as the coin was worth. The Gospels tell us that unlike  money, time and energy, there’s no danger that the love of God will run out, and this is the love that is his gift to us. We don’t need to ration it. It grows in the giving, so we can share it generously with anyone who needs it, and if we do so, we will find that there is always more than we can ask or imagine still to draw on.

Amen